Poetry
by C.Isaac
Summary: Poetry is found in the ruins as prayers against the dark.


**Poetry**

_Hands be quick; Feet be fleet_  
_Lord let me find something to eat.  
_

He never expected to find poetry in the future.

Especially not something new. It matched the circumstance of the world, desperate and hurting and pained, but there it was. New and different.

Finding _her_ murmuring it softly to herself over and over as she cleaned an old .22 long rifle made it even more surreal. He still could not reconcile the human, the person, sitting there, doing things humans do, with the machine he had known so long. The soft sing-song voice added just one more thing to the heaping pile of differences that should divorce the two in his head. And yet none of them seemed to matter.

Long slim fingers deftly cleared dirt and grime from the mechanism of the gun. She wasted no movements as she performed the task with a certainty only gained through countless repetitions. Like her doppelganger once had, at the kitchen table whenever there was nothing else to do. Just like when he had first seen her, for a moment they were the same person to him, but the whispered singing of the rhyme broke that illusion for the thousandth time.

He still wanted to scream every time he looked at her. He wanted to shake her and yell at her that she was not supposed to be singing. That she was not supposed to be a person.

"Just gonna stand and stare?"

"… uh, maybe?" How long had he been staring? He wished he could remember.

She looked up from the gun, one brow pulled upwards, "Well, gonna sit? Not much left of the fire."

True enough, the faint few embers in front of her were already dying. Nuclear winter had left the world very cold and even in August in SoCal, it could get to near freezing temperatures at night.

John settled across from her, legs crossed underneath him. He said nothing as he held his hands over the fading warmth.

She did not go back to cleaning the gun or to studiously ignoring him like she usually did when he stared at her too long. Allison stared back this time, watching the features of John's face. When the quiet had been long enough, she asked, "Seriously, what's up with you? You don't seem to be a mental, but… you're different."

"Where's Kyle and Derek? Cho and Nguyen?"

"Patrol. You're changing the subject."

"What's with the rifle?"

"Pack of dogs has been sniffing around nearby. Thought I'd cap a couple and get us some real meat for a few days, assuming they're not glowing too bad." She tilted her head, a mimic of a mimic as she regarded him. "Why do you look at me like you know me?"

Glimpses, expressions, and the sound of her voice made it so hard to separate his memories from reality. Two beings became a rhyme in a poem. They sounded the same, but were not. The lie came out as a mumble. "I don't know you."

"You knew my name the first time you met me."

He squeezed his eyes shut. It had been a slip. A name said over foosball tables and halfway houses. He had been so proud of himself for remembering and being so damn _clever_, he had forgotten he should not know it. But that slip had not been as bad as…

"And when we dodged those H-Ks last week, in the middle of it all you called me something else."

"Cameron." He croaked the name, all moisture gone from his throat.

She stared at him levelly, "So you had a girl once."

He studied his feet as he nodded an acknowledgement. It felt more an admission to himself than to the woman in front of him.

"Do I look like her? Remind you of her somehow?"

John snorted out through his nostrils. If only she knew. He allowed himself to admit, "Yeah, you do."

Her lips curled into a faint smile he had seen in another time. An imitation of artificiality. "We all had people and lost them. Nothing for that but to say a prayer and move on."

"It's hard to explain –"

"But I'm not her," she cut him off, expression turning serious. "So stop thinking I might be. I'm me, so don't be a freak."

He looked up and stared at her, trying to parse the reused phrase when she giggled and reached over, shoving him lightly in the shoulder. Laughter came from him as he rolled back across the hard packed ground.

When he finally righted himself, he smiled at her and asked, "Got any more rhymes?"

"They're my prayers," she said with overdramatic seriousness. She let the smile return to her face before she continued, "There's one you say quiet, on the inside, when you see the metal coming. But I'll say it out loud for you."

_Make them deaf; make them blind_  
_Keep me whole; give me peace of mind_  
_Please Lord, save mankind._

He had it memorized in an instant and imagined being curled tightly into a ventilation duct or against a pile of rubble as the machines advance. In his imagination a scared child whispers it to themselves in their heart and head over and over again. A plea for something to have pity when they know the machines will not.

"Do you know any?" she finally asked him.

"No."

"Make something up, then."

He shook his head, "I'm not good at this sort of thing."

"You're good at everything I've seen you bother trying. Just do it."

Eyes closed, he took a breath and recited the first bit of prose that came to mind.

_Cold of heart; evil in hand_  
_The devil's minions walk the land._  
_Run and hide, pray all you may._  
_Satan's army comes today._

When he looked at her again, he found her staring at him intently, eyes squinted.

"What's wrong with you?" she asked.

"That… is a long list."


End file.
